This week, representatives from the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Program and trade and finance ministers are meeting in Geneva to discuss something called "Aid for Trade." The initiative is part of a deal struck at the 2005 WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong as an attempt to move the Doha Round of trade negotiations forward by helping poor countries take advantage of all the alleged benefits of a further liberalized trading system.
Late week, IATP's Trade Information Project (TIP) in Geneva, who has been following the Aid for Trade initiative from the beginning, outlined the status of Aid for Trade and some of the clear shortcomings, including:
* There has been no additional aid offered. Instead money will have to be diverted from other assistance, such as health and education, to accomodate trade. Overall development aid actually declined in 2006.
* It is unclear what conditions will be attached to Aid for Trade and whether those conditions will be used to perpetuate unfair trade rules and the current WTO agenda.
* Donors and agencies use different definitions of what counts as Aid for Trade, making pledges and assessments impossible to monitor.
* Priorities of Aid for Trade have been identified by WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, and significantly influenced by international agencies. Instead, priorities should be defined by recipient countries in consultations with all affected stakeholders.
What about fixing the international trading system itself, which has expanded inequities both within countries and among countries? Last year, IATP's Carin Smaller questioned whether the Aid for Trade initiative was being used as a consolation prize for a failed Doha Agenda. Recent projections and research by the World Bank, the UN and a variety of independent think tanks confirm that the poorest countries would be the biggest losers if the current proposals for the Doha Agenda were adopted. IATP's Steve Suppan and researchers at Tuft's Global Development and Environment Institute among others have written about this.
In a letter to WTO negotiators in July, over 90 civil society organizations from 35 countries criticized the Doha Agenda for being "manipulated to primarily serve the interests of the northern industrialized powers to expand market access for their transnational corporations." The groups called for two-year moratorium to re-think the current model and create "alternative trade regimes that are people, development and environment centered." Some alternatives for a fair trade system have already been proposed through the EcoFair Dialogue.
A discussion of alternatives to the Doha Round would be a better way for the WTO to spend a week.
